Sunday at Home

EVERY SABBATH
morning,
in the summer time, I thrust back
the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple,
which stands opposite my chamber window. First, the
weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives
the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower,
and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as
it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the
loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved
frame-work of the portal is marked strongly out. At
length, the morning glory, in its descent from Heaven,
comes down the stone steps, one by one; and there stands
the steeple, glowing with fresh radiance, while the shades
of twilight still hide themselves among the nooks of the
adjacent buildings. Methinks, though the same sun
brightens it, every fair morning, yet the steeple has a
peculiar robe of brightness for the Sabbath.

By dwelling
near a church, a person soon contracts an
attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and
conceive its messy walls, and its dim emptiness, to be
instinct with a calm, and meditative, and somewhat
melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost, in our
thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant,
with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care
for the great and small concerns of all the town. Hourly,
while it speaks a moral to the few that think, it reminds
thousands of busy individuals of their separate and most
secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad
the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither
have gladness and festivity found a better utterance, than
by its tongue; and when the dead are slowly passing to
their home, the steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them
welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human
interests, what a moral loneliness, on week-days, broods
round about its stately height! It has no kindred with the
houses above which it towers; it looks down into the narrow
thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd are elbowing
their passage at its base. A glance at the body of the
church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of
distant windows, amid refracted shadows, we discern the
vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the
voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to solitude
how time is passing. Time--where man lives not--what is it
but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are
garnered up, throughout the week, all thoughts and feelings
that have reference to eternity, until the holy day comes
round again, to let them forth. Might not, then, its more
appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town, with
space for old trees to wave around it, and throw their
solemn shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of
this, hereafter.

But, on
the Sabbath, I watch the earliest sunshine, and
fancy that a holier brightness marks the day, when there
shall be no buzz of voices on the Exchange, nor traffic in
the shops, nor crowd, nor business, anywhere but at church.
Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether I see it
scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across
the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or
tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber floor,
still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine.--And ever let me
recognize it! Some illusions, and this among them, are the
shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me, or
seem to close their evil wings, and settle down; but, so
long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed, and the light
of heaven retains its sanctity, on the Sabbath--while that
blessed sunshine lives within me--never can my soul have
lost the instinct of its faith. If it have gone astray, it
will return again.

I love
to spend such pleasant Sabbaths, from morning till
night, behind the curtain of my open window. Are they
spent amiss? Every spot, so near the church as to be
visited by the circling shadow of the steeple, should be
deemed consecrated ground, to-day. With stronger truth be
it said, that a devout heart may consecrate a den of
thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same.
My heart, perhaps, has not such holy, nor, I would fain
trust, such impious potency. It must suffice, that, though
my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church,
while many, whose bodily presence fills the accustomed
seats, have left their souls at home. But I am there, even
before my friend, the sexton. At length, he comes--a man of
kindly, but sombre aspect, in dark gray clothes, and hair
of the same mixture--he comes, and applies his key to the
wide portal. Now, my thoughts may go in among the dusty
pews, or ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come
forth again, to enjoy the music of the bell. How glad, yet
solemn too! All the steeples in town are talking together,
aloft in the sunny air, and rejoicing among themselves,
while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are
the children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which is
kept somewhere within the church. Often, while looking at
the arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a
score of these little girls and boys, in pink, blue,
yellow, and crimson frocks, bursting suddenly forth into
the sunshine, like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been
shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might compare them to
cherubs, haunting that holy place.

About a
quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the
bell, individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The
earliest is invariably an old woman in black, whose bent
frame and rounded shoulders are evidently laden with some
heavy affliction, which she is eager to rest upon the
altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for the
sake of that sorrowful old soul! There is an elderly man,
also, who arrives in good season, and leans against the
corner of the tower, just within the line of its shadow,
looking downward with a darksomc brow. I sometimes fancy
that the old woman is the happier of the two. After these,
others drop in singly, and by twos and threes, either
disappearing through the doorway, or taking their stand in
its vicinity. At last, and always with an unexpected
sensation, the bell turns in the steeple overhead, and
throws out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower to its
foundation. As if there were magic in the sound, the
sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are
immediately thronged with two long lines of people, all
converging hitherward, and streaming into the church.
Perhaps the far-off roar of a coach draws nearer--a deeper
thunder by its contrast with the surrounding
stillness--until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at the
portal, among their humblest brethren. Beyond that
entrance, in theory at least, there are no distinctions of
earthly rank; nor, indeed, by the goodly apparel which is
flaunting in the sun, would there seem to be such, on the
hither side. Those pretty girls! Why will they disturb my
pious meditations! Of all days in the week, they should
strive to look least fascinating on the Sabbath, instead of
heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the
blessed angels, and keep our thoughts from heaven. Were I
the minister himself, I must needs look. One girl is white
muslin from the waist upward, and black silk downward to
her slippers; a second blushes from top-knot to shoe-tie,
one universal scarlet; another shines of a pervading
yellow, as if she had made a garment of the sunshine. The
greater part, however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness
of hue. Their veils, especially when the wind raises them,
give a lightness to the general effect, and make them
appear like airy phantoms, as they flit up the steps, and
vanish into the sombre door-way. Nearly all--though it is
very strange that I should know it--wear white stockings,
white as snow, and neat slippers, laced crosswise with
black ribbon, pretty high above the ankles. A white
stocking is infinitely more effective than a black one.

Here comes
the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe
simplicity, needing no black silk gown to denote his
office. His aspect claims my reverence, but cannot win my
love. Were I to picture Saint Peter, keeping fast the gate
of Heaven, and frowning, more stern than pitiful, on the
wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By
middle age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon
the heart, or been attempered by it. As the minister
passes into the church, the bell holds its iron tongue, and
all the low murmur of the congregation dies away. The gray
sexton looks up and down the street, and then at my window
curtain, where, through the small peep-hole, I half fancy
that he has caught my eye. Now, every loiterer has gone
in, and the street lies asleep in the quiet sun, while a
feeling of loneliness comes over me, and brings also an
uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. Oh, I
ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising
congregation reaches my ears. They are standing up to
pray. Could I bring my heart into unison with those who
are praying in yonder church, and lift it heavenward, with
a fervor of supplication, but no distinct request, would
not that be the safest kind of prayer; "Lord, look down
upon me in mercy!" With that sentiment gushing from my soul
might I not leave all the rest to Him? Hark! the hymn.
This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can
enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full
choir, and the massive melody of the organ, would fall with
a weight upon me. At this distance, it thrills through my
frame, and plays upon my heart-strings, with a pleasure
both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be praised, I know
nothing of music, as a science; and the most elaborate
harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse's
lullaby. The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my
mind, with fanciful echoes, till I start from my reverie,
and find that the sermon has commenced. It is my
misfortune seldom to fructify, in a regular way, by any but
printed sermons. The first strong idea, which the preacher
utters, gives birth to a train of thought, and leads me
onward, step by step, quite out of hearing of the good
man's voice, unless he be indeed a son of thunder. At my
open window, catching now and then a sentence of the
"parson's saw," I am as well situated as at the foot of the
pulpit stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this
one discourse will be the texts of many sermons, preached
by those colleague pastors--colleagues, but often
disputants--my Mind and Heart. The former pretends to be a
scholar, and perplexes me with doctrinal points; the latter
takes me on the score of feeling; and both, like several
other preachers, spend their strength to very little
purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand
them.

Suppose that
a few hours have passed, and behold me still
behind my curtain, just before the close of the afternoon
service. The hour hand on the dial has passed beyond four
o'clock. The declining sun is hidden behind the steeple,
and throws its shadow straight across the street, so that
my chamber is darkened, as with a cloud. Around the church
door, all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity,
beyond the threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats are
slammed down, and the pew doors thrown back--a multitude of
feet are trampling along the unseen aisles--and the
congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost,
scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and
dark phalanx of grown men, and lastly, a crowd of females,
with young children, and a few scattered husbands. This
instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness is one of
the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people
are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have
been wrapt, as it were, in a sort of holy trance, by the
fervor of their devotion. There is a young man, a
third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to flourish
a white handkerchief, and brush the seat of a tight pair of
black silk pantaloons, which shine as if varnished. They
must have been made of the stuff called "everlasting," or
perhaps of the same piece as Christian's garments, in the
Pilgrim's Progress, for he put them on two summers ago, and
has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a great
liking to those black silk pantaloons. But, now, with nods
and greetings among friends, each matron takes her
husband's arm, and paces gravely homeward, while the girls
also flutter away, after arranging sunset walks with their
favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve of love. At
length, the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here,
with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies
and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear, the
minister, who softens his severe visage, and bestows a kind
word on each. Poor souls! To them, the most captivating
picture of bliss in Heaven, is--"There we shall be white!"

All is
solitude again. But, hark!--a broken warbling of
voices, and now, attuning its grandeur to their sweetness,
a stately peal of the organ. Who are the choristers? Let
me dream, that the angels, who came down from Heaven, this
blessed morn, to blend themselves with the worship of the
truly good, are playing and singing their farewell to the
earth.--On the wings of that rich melody, they were borne
upward.

This, gentle
reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few
of the singing men and singing women had lingered behind
their fellows, and raised their voices fitfully, and blew a
careless note upon the organ. Yet, it lifted my soul
higher than all their former strains. They are gone--the
sons and daughters of music--and the gray sexton is just
closing the portal. For six days more, there will be no
face of man in the pews, and aisles, and galleries, nor a
voice in the pulpit, nor music in the choir. Was it worth
while to rear this massive edifice, to be a desert in the
heart of the town, and populous only for a few hours of
each seventh day? Oh! but the church is a symbol of
religion. Clay its site, which was consecrated on the day
v. hen the first tree was felled, be kept holy forever, a
spot of solitude and peace, amid the trouble and vanity of
our week-day world! There is a moral, and a religion too,
even in the silent walls. And, may the steeple still point
heavenward, and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the
Sabbath morn!